Optimized Systems Software

Optimized Systems Software (OSS) was a small company producing operating systems and programming languages for the Atari 8-bit and Apple II computer families. OSS is most noted for authoring Atari's BASIC and Disk Operating System (DOS) products.

History

Atari planned to follow up its successful Atari VCS computer game system with a more powerful home computer, to be introduced at the January 1979 Comsumer Electronics Show. Microsoft BASIC had been licensed for this purpose, but the task of retrofitting the code into an 8k cartridge proved too difficult to meet schedule. Consequently, Atari turned to Shepardson Microsystems, Inc. (SMI), which proposed jettisoning Microsoft BASIC in favor of an SMI product. Atari proceeded to contract with SMI for not only Atari BASIC, but the Atari Disk Operating System itself. Development of both products was completed ahead of schedule.

In early 1981, SMI concluded that their BASIC and DOS products were not viable, and permitted them (with the Atari Assembler/Editor product) to be purchased by one of the developers, who formed Optimized Systems Software. The new company enhanced the products, renaming them OS/A+ (the Disk Operating System), BASIC A+ (a disk-based language), and EASMD (a powerful macro-based assembler / editor).

OSS continued to work with Atari on enhanced products, most of which never actually reached the market. OSS' independent products fared somewhat better, particularly the Action programming language. However, with Atari's decline in the shadow of the exploding IBM PC clone market, OSS faded from the computer market.

Products

OS/A+

OS/A+ was a disk-based replacement for the Atari DOS and the Apple II DOS. The last version produced was OS/A+ 2.1.

Atari DOS consisted of two portions, a memory-resident portion that facilitated access to disk files by programs, and a disk-resident portion providing menu-driven utilities to format, copy, delete, rename, and otherwise manipulate files on Atari's 810 disk drive. The menu system was too large to keep memory-resident, but the necessity to reload the menu system after every program was frustrating to many users.

OS/A+ replaced the menu-driven utilities with a compact command line approach similar to CP/M (and later, Microsoft DOS). The command line was small enough to remain in memory with most applications, removing the need for the dreaded post-program reload.

OS/A+ 4

OSS extended the successful OS/A+ product with additional capabilities for version 4, many of which were arguably ahead of their time. For example, the strict "8.3" naming scheme (eight alphanumeric characters with a three character extension) was replaced by "long" filenames, similar to the Microsoft DOS transition to VFAT in 1995.

However, unlike VFAT, OS/A+ 4 disks were not backward compatible with earlier systems; Atari DOS or OS/A+ 2.1 could not read disks formatted by OS/A+ 4, breaking backward compatibility. The memory footprint was larger as well, resulting in insufficient memory to run some popular applications.

As a result of these drawbacks, OS/A+ 4 did not achieve the market penetration as the earlier product.

BASIC A+

Atari BASIC had been designed to fit in a single 8k cartridge, with an optional second cartridge adding additional capability (the Atari 800 home computer featured two cartridge slots). However, the second cartridge was never produced.

Instead, OSS produced a disk-based product called BASIC A Plus (or BASIC A+), which was compatible with Atari BASIC but corrected several bugs and added quite a few features. Among the notable features were PRINT USING (for formatted output), trace and debug enhancements, direct DOS commands, and explicit support for the Atari computers' exceptional graphics hardware.

Because BASIC A+ had to be purchased, programs developed using its extended features could not be shared with people who did not own the interpreter.

ACTION!

OSS' last product was a cartridge-based language that combined the readability of BASIC with the performance of the C programming language. The Action programming language used in-memory compilation (presaging Turbo Pascal) straight to very efficient 6502 executable code. Action was known for its execution speed, but never became popular beyond Atari home computers.

References

Inside Atari DOS Introduction by Bill Wilkinson, 1982